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Monday, August 31, 2015

Page 69: The Lost Journals of Sylvia Plath

The Page 69 Test is not mine. It has been around since 2007, asking authors to compare page 69 against the meat of the actual story it is a part of. I loved the whole idea of it and so I'm stealing it specifically to showcase small press titles - novels, novellas, short story collections, the works! So until the founder of The Page 69 Test calls a cease and desist, let's do this thing....

Katie and Wilson are perpetual grad students, married
with small children. Wilson loves Katie,
but he often feels as if he’s been jumped into a gang he had no intention of
joining. Katie loves Wilson—in brief,
flickering moments—but she is also obsessed with her neighbor Steven.

Prior to this scene, Katie has coaxed Wilson into the
wilderness for a night walk in a nature preserve—it is the dead of winter in
Michigan. They argue while standing at a
bog looking for swans (Katie’s idea).
Katie confesses she is lonely and wants to find “her tribe.” Wilson scoffs. They fight.
Wilson says, “I am your tribe,
whether you like it or not,” and Katie runs off into the woods, leaving him to
fend for himself.

On page 69,
the lovers have made it home safely and are lying in bed, Katie suffocating in
Wilson’s angry silence. She remembers a
time she joined a “goddess” group for one night. There was kissing. A woman spoke reverently of her “pouch.” Katie wasn’t buying it.

What is The
Lost Journals of Sylvia Plath about?

The novel is
set in the frozen wasteland of Midwestern academia. Wilson A. Lavender, father
of three, instructor of women’s studies and self-proclaimed genius, is
beginning to think he knows nothing
about women. He spends much of his time
in his office, not working on his
dissertation, a creative piece titled The
Lost Journals of Sylvia Plath. A
sober alcoholic, he also spends much of his time not drinking—until he hooks up with his office mate, Alice Cherry,
an undercover stripper who introduces him to “the buffer”—the solution to his
woes.

Wilson’s
wife, Katie, is an anxious hippie, a genuine earth mother, and a recent PhD
with no plans other than to read People
magazine, eat chocolate, and seduce her young neighbor, a community college
student who’s built a bar in his garage.
Katie is intelligent, funny, and disturbed by a violent childhood. Her husband’s “tortured genius” exhausts and
amuses her.

The
Lavender’s stagnant world is roiled when Katie’s pregnant sister, January,
moves in. January is obsessed with her
lost love, 80s rocker Stevie Flame, and is on a quest to reconnect with her
glittery, big-haired past. A free spirit
to the point of using other people’s toothbrushes without asking, she drives
Wilson crazy.

Do
you think this page gives our readers an accurate sense of what The
Lost Journals of Sylvia Plath is about? Does it align itself with the
book’s overall theme?

It does. Much like the poet Sylvia Plath (whose “lost
journals” Wilson is re-creating), Katie’s psyche is fractured, due to trauma
she experienced as a child. She is
unable to find connection with other adults, even though it’s the thing she
wants most. Also, she is obsessed with
her body. And Wilson is a moody
motherfucker. (Is that a theme?) But beneath and around and above all the
characters’ soul-sucking angst is life: horrible and breathtaking and
glorious.

“Pass it on!” the pouched goddess
had crowed as Katie stood, panicked, in the sacred circle, in the cold basement
of the YMCA, surrounded by thirteen intense, fragile, kissing strangers.

“No physical affection,” she’d
wanted to cry out, but could only grimace tensely and forget how to breathe.
The other women had no problem; they were laughing, having fun. A few were
weeping, smiles shining through their tears.

Katie hated every second of it. She
didn’t want to be touched by anyone but her kids, her dog, Steven, and maybe
Wilson, if she was in the mood.

And she hadn’t bought the pouch
business. She’d looked at the offending goddess, at her bravely exposed belly
and starry deluded eyes, and thought to herself, Babies don’t do that,
Twinkies do. She never went back.

She would start an exercise program
first thing in the morning. Getting up at five a.m. and running daily would be
perfect. She’d be fit and friendly, like a good dog, and everyone would love
her. Steven would love her. He’d renounce Lucy, and they could have wild sex
every afternoon in his fragrant, bubbling bedroom. But first she’d have to find
a babysitter, which, as every mother knew, was next to impossible,
so . . .

The trick to running was the getting
up at dawn. She glanced at the clock. It was almost midnight. If she fell
asleep instantly, she’d get five hours of sleep, about half of what she needed.
It wouldn’t be pretty. She’d be thin, maybe, but she’d also be sleep-deprived
and manic, a scary mom on the fast track to a nervous breakdown.

If she and Wilson could only get
along, life would be so much easier. After the walk—after he’d washed Lovely,
cleaned his ears, fluffed him with the hair dryer, brushed his few intact
teeth, and threw his collar in the wash—Katie had begged his forgiveness. When
he didn’t answer, she pointed out that all he’d had to do was follow. And
Lovely was fine. He’d never been lost in the first place. He had excellent
homing devices and had met up with her halfway to the car, having instinctively
known, the way a child does, that the fighting had begun and the fun was over.

Thinking about it, she was now much more angry than
contrite. Wilson still wasn’t sleeping. He lay beside her in a kind of furious
limbo, and she had the urge to pinch him and ask him to sleep on the couch. How
could she rest beside his toxic mood? It was debilitating. He knew you weren’t
supposed to go to bed angry. It was rule number one, they’d learned, at the
first of the few therapy sessions they'd attended before deciding that the

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kimberly Knutsen is professor of English at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she holds a PhD in English from Western Michigan University and an MA from New Mexico State University. Her short stories have appeared in Cimarron Review and Hawai῾i Review.

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I have been buried beneath small press and self-published review copies since 2009. My passion for supporting the small press and self publishing communities has driven me out into the world wide web to demonstrate alternative ways to spread the word about amazing publishers, authors, and novels you might never had heard of. Feeding your reading addiction, one book at a time.